isbn 0-87099-967-2 Printed in the United States of America by Sawyer Printers, Charlestown, Massachusetts Bound by Acme Bookbinding, Charlestown, Massachusetts

to Eleanor

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Contents

Preface List of Figures List of Plates 1. Sources 2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels 3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women 4. Personal names 5. Some exceptional cases 6. Conclusions Note on the erasure of the title z£t.nswt &quot;king's daughter&quot; Abbreviations Notes

ix xi xv 1 3 19 33 37 45 47 49 55

vii

Preface

This monograph had its beginning in a conference organized by Barbara Lesko at Brown University in November 1987. Along with the other papers that were read, it was subsequently published in a volume edited by her, and entitled Women's Earliest Records: from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia (Scholar's Press, 1989). With substantial additions and a greater number of illustrations, my own contribution to the conference was initially reprinted by the Metropolitan Museum's Office Services Department. The present edition has not only been much more extensively revised and augmented, but, thanks to the computer skill of Dr. Peter Der Manuelian, has been greatly improved in appearance. Using the same technology, he has also designed three of the figures. In particular, greater attention is given to the special esteem accorded to women as mothers, and further evidence is provided for the titles they held as weavers and midwives. More has also been added to the discussion of names, and important additions have been made in the section dealing with exceptional cases. Although the period covered by this study is limited to the Old Kingdom (Dynasties III­VIII, ca. 2700­2200 B.C.) and the succeeding Dynasties (IX­ XI), down to the Theban reunification of Egypt (ca. 2035), the evidence of later periods has occasionally been cited for comparison, and especially that of the Middle Kingdom. Proper names are generally given in the most familiar form when they are well known (e.g. Mereruka rather than Merer-wi-kai or the like). Consonantal transliteration is used in Section 4, dealing with names, but accompanied with translations, as is also frequently done in the case of titles. Transliteration of this kind is again used for both names and titles in the notes. These have been placed at the end because of their length, but also because they are primarily addressed to Egyptologists. And it is hoped that this account of the role of Egyptian women of the Third Millennium B.C. may be of interest to a somewhat ix

x

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

greater circle of readers. As before, the abbreviated titles of books and periodicals follow those used in the Helck­Otto Lexicon der Ägyptologie (Vol. VII, Wiesbaden 1992), but these have now been listed along with new titles.

Although this essay concerns the role of non-royal women, it is impossible to avoid some comparisons with and analogies to the royal family, and one must consider the tomb chapels of kings and queens to find some of the evidence for women of lesser status. In any case tomb chapels provide the bulk of the evidence. An extraordinary number of them have now come to light, but many of them are incompletely preserved, and nearly all of them belong primarily to men, more specifically to men of high rank and office. The Sun Temple of Neuserre1 provides a bit of further evidence, as does the pyramid temple of Sahure.2 In all such cases we are dependent on iconography, and on the brief labels attached to the representations. Apart from these labels, giving little more than names and titles, the inscriptional evidence is meager. Hieratic sources are virtually limited to a few &quot;letters to the dead,&quot; containing some perplexing hints of domestic strife,3 and to a small group of ostraca that accompanied the mummies of women from El Kab to Helwan.4 There are no autobiographies of women that tell of their accomplishments, and the repertory of so-called autobiographical epithets is extremely limited compared to those applied to men. About the only ones that do not concern their husbands or children are: smt ¡b nm¢w &quot;who relieves the heart of the orphan,&quot;5 ¢zwt rm &quot;whom people praise&quot;6 mrt n¡wt.s tmt &quot;whom all her town loved,7 and mrrt nr &quot;whom the god loved.&quot;8 These isolated examples are all from the late Sixth Dynasty. Also, from the inscriptions of an earlier &quot;overseer of dancing for the king&quot; there is the more exceptional epithet m££ nfrw n nb.s &quot;she who beholds the beauty of her lord.&quot;9 And a later woman, probably dating to the Eighth Dynasty, is &quot;one who gives bread to him who is hungry, clothing to him who is naked,&quot; echoing a common cliché in the autobiographies of Old Kingdom men.10 Despite these limitations it is possible to determine at least the most essential aspects of women's role in society, with the addition of some occasionally surprising details. 1

2

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 1.

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

Unlike queens, who have tomb chapels of their own and do not appear very conspicuously in those of their royal spouses,11 non-royal wives normally share their husband's chapels, although there are admittedly a certain number of well-preserved chapels of men who have children, but make no mention whatever of a wife: the most familiar examples are those of Akhty-hotep, his son Ptah-hotep, Hetep-her-akhty and Khentika, all at or from Saqqara.12 The reverse situation, where a non-royal woman makes no mention of her husband, is exceedingly rare; two interesting examples will be described presently, in section 5. When the wife shares her husband's tomb she is clearly a secondary partner, her secondary status being apparent both in the reliefs and in the inscriptions. Even on the false door of her own offering niche she often sits on the subordinate right side13 of the offering table, while her husband takes the dominant left side opposite her.14 I know of only nine cases where the woman sits on the left side opposite the man, only three of them certainly involving a husband and wife.15 While there are also many cases where each appears alone on a pair of false doors,16 the male tomb owner almost as frequently appears alone on both false doors, even though his wife is to be seen elsewhere in his chapel.17 If the couple are seated together on a single chair before the offering table, facing right, her legs are passed behind the seat so that she is placed behind him, while he is nearest the offerings (Fig. 1).18 She holds on to him, rarely to the extent that the gesture could be termed an embrace;19 he scarcely ever holds her.20 Their relationship is always stated by identifying her as &quot;his wife&quot; or &quot;his beloved wife&quot; and while she is often &quot;revered with her husband,&quot;21 the reverse is almost never stated, as though her opinion was of less consequence. In a rare case where a husband praises his wife he says he made her burial for her, &quot;so great was her state of reverence in my thoughts;22 she did

3

4

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

not utter a statement that repelled my heart; she did not transgress while she was young in life&quot;23 In short she was submissive and virtuous. Similarly another wife is &quot;one who speaks pleasantly (dt nfr) and sweetens love in the presence of (ft) her husband.&quot;24 In other cases the husband says &quot;this is one who is revered,&quot;25 or &quot;she is revered by me (r.¡).&quot;26 The adjunctive status of the wife is also indicated by the frequent presence of a &quot;redundant determinative&quot; after her name in labels of both statues and two-dimensional representations, while such a determinative is omitted after the name of the husband. A similar situation appears on a number of isolated lintels and architraves where both are named (e.g. Fig. 10, though here the woman is probably his mother). The point is that the presence of the tomb owner's body and his all-pervasive identification with the tomb chapel made the name-determinative unnecessary, while such considerations were less applicable in the case of the wife.27 Depending on the context, children are called &quot;his son/daughter,&quot; less commonly, when the children are isolated in the presence of the mother, &quot;her son/daughter,&quot; but never &quot;their son/daughter.&quot;28 This peculiarity is only emphasized by a provincial relief where a son who stands beside both parents is called &quot;his­her son,&quot; using both pronouns in succession.29 Marriage was normally monogamous, although there is at least one probable case of concubinage in the Sixth Dynasty at Edfu,30 and some evidence of polygamy in the Heracleopolitan Period.31 The tomb chapels depict, for the most part, only the immediate family--the tomb owner's wife and children-- even though his inscriptions often proclaim: &quot;I was one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, gracious to his siblings,&quot;32 or: &quot;I was respectful to my father and gracious to my mother.&quot;33 Siblings are more rarely depicted, or other members of the older generation, but if the father is shown, the mother usually accompanies him.34 And in quite a few cases the mother alone is represented, or is shown more prominently. In several instances she is represented because of her exalted status, as a queen35 or princess,36 but in a number of other cases she has no such pretensions.37 In one case she is, exceptionally, shown seated beside her son on an architrave above the entrance to his chapel (Fig. 2),38 as also in another chapel, where she figures as prominently as his wife, sitting beside him to partake of offerings.39 In yet another chapel she shares her son's false door (Fig. 3),40 and although the false door is dedicated

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

5

Fig. 2.

by his father, who appears on the right outer jamb, she is not identified as the dedicant's wife, but solely as the mother of his children. And while the son is embraced by his own wife on the left outer jamb, she receives no other attention. It is his mother who appears with him in the offering scene (not shown here); she faces him again on the right inner jamb and is seated beside him at the bottom of the niche, where another son is also represented. As in these cases, it is usually the tomb owner's mother who is given this attention, much less frequently his mother-in-law.41 In one rather unusual case (Fig. 4)42 the mother is seated opposite her son, the metalworker of the royal ornaments Wer-ka. She is, exceptionally, on a smaller scale than he, and makes the following statement concerning him: &quot;As for any man who will do anything ill to this, there will be judgement with him because of it by the Great God.&quot; The threat is familiar, but it is usually made by the man who owned the tomb, and it suggests that she was responsible for having it built.43 The inheritance of wealth, as well as status, undoubtedly played a part in the prominence given the mother in tomb chapels, for there is inscriptional evidence for the fact that non-royal women could own and bequeath property,44 and in at least one case, dating to the Heracleopolitan Period (Fig. 5), a son specifically attributes his wealth to his mother's help, stressing that this help was given while he was in his father's household.45 In his own words he says: &quot;I acquired it in the dwelling (flnw) of my father Iti (but) it was my mother Ibeb who did it for me.&quot; She is depicted beside him on the funerary stela that bears this inscription and holds him in what almost seems an embrace. An analogous situation may explain some of the other cases, such as the son of an important governor of several provinces who very conspicuously refers to

6

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 3.

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

7

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

8

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

himself as &quot;son of Khenet,&quot; his mother, on his own false door (Fig. 6).46 This is particularly remarkable because filiation is not usually expressed on funerary monuments of the Old Kingdom,47 and in other situations, such as letters, jars,

Fig. 6.

hieratic mummy tags or rock inscriptions, it is the father who is generally named, or both parents.48 But there are a number of cases where paternity is omitted, and only the mother is mentioned.49 This is more strikingly apparent from the evidence of the Middle Kingdom, when parentage was frequently indicated.50 In a few other cases a son made room in his own mastaba for his mother or mother-in-law,51 although she more usually shared the mastaba of her husband. Women are also occasionally credited with financing the burial or burial equipment of a husband, father or other kinsman,52 although such cases are, of course, greatly outnumbered by those in which a son is said to have provided for his father's burial.53

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

9

A particularly interesting case of this kind is shown in the Frontispiece,54 a Sixth Dynasty false door from Abydos. Here a daughter says she has provided the monument for her parents, both of whom are represented, but she identifies herself as &quot;her daughter, her beloved.&quot; And her mother is, in fact, the principal object of her filial piety, for she alone is mentioned in the offering formula that follows the dedication, and she is assigned the place of honor, at the left of the offering table and on the left jamb. The unnamed woman who stands on either side of the offering scene is presumably the donor. In only two cases is the role of the mother graphically emphasized by showing her on a much larger scale than the tomb owner, to the extent that he is evidently represented as a child; but she is a queen in both instances, and he a king's eldest son.55 A parallel is to be seen in the statue of Pepy II sitting on the lap of his mother.56 Even more explicit representations of the mother's role are to be found on the higher plane of goddesses who nurse kings at their breast,57 or on the lower level of peasants who are similarly portrayed in limestone tomb models58 and in scenes of daily life. In one case the mother and child, whom she nurses, appear at the end of a series of figures below the offering scene of a false door; the other figures are bringing offerings, straining beer and slaughtering a steer, and all bear names, including the pair in question.59 In another case (Fig. 7),60 the context is the making of bread, and the mother holds her child to her breast while heating moulds for the loaves. Above her an older child gives his mother a hug while she grinds grain, and she seems to reassure him by saying: &quot;Here I am, here I am my dear.&quot; All the other two-dimensional examples of this motif--four in all--situate the nursing mother on a cargo boat, where she probably accompanies her husband.61 But the motif is also exemplified by the hieroglyphic determinative of mnTMt &quot;nurse&quot; (title page), which is known from the beginning of the Old Kingdom onward.62 Despite the wife's secondary status in the tomb chapel, she seems to have enjoyed the companionship of her husband very frequently. In the intimacy of the bedroom, she plays the harp to him (Fig. 8).63 Elsewhere it is much more often his daughters who play this instrument in his presence,64 sometimes singing as they do so (Fig. 9).65 There are, in fact, so many examples of this sort that playing the harp must have been as important to the education of a

10

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 7.

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

11

Fig. 8.

Fig. 9.

12

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

well-to-do young lady of the Old Kingdom as playing the spinet or piano used to be in our own recent past.66 The couple repeatedly share the same table in the offering niche, in which case they are almost always isocephalic. One exception (Fig. 10),67 probably dating to the first half of the Fifth Dynasty, not only places the woman on the dominant left side of the offering scene on her false door, but shows her on a larger scale than the man who is the principal tomb owner; both her parents are represented behind her. Elsewhere on the same wall she is on a smaller scale than the man. Their relationship is not specified, and they may well be mother and son rather than (as I have assumed elsewhere) husband and wife.

Fig. 10.

A group statue shows an adult son standing beside his mother, who is similarly a little taller than he is.68 Otherwise the use of scale is rather variable. As in the offering scene on false doors, the wife may be isocephalic, but is more often slightly smaller than her husband, probably no more so than she was in life. In

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

13

other situations she may be much smaller, depending on the context. Statue groups show all these possibilities, but the slightly smaller wife seems to predominate. From the very beginning of the Fourth Dynasty onward, the couple often stand together in scenes of daily life as he views the manifold activities of his artisans and laborers.69 She also accompanies him on boating trips to the marshes while he harpoons fish, brings down fowl with a throwstick or occasionally when he &quot;rattles papyrus&quot; (zßß w£) in honor of the goddess Hathor. In one of the fishing scenes, probably dating to the Eighth or Ninth Dynasty (Fig. 11),70 the wife follows her husband in a second skiff, collecting lotus blossoms. In the fowling scenes she sometimes points out a likely target and may

Fig. 11.

even make a comment such as: &quot;O Sire, get me this gnw-bird!&quot; To which he obligingly replies: &quot;I'll do so and get it for thee&quot; (Fig. 12).71 This particular example from Meir is, to my knowledge, the only conversation between husband and wife that has been preserved from the period in question. But another, of which we have only the words of the wife, is probably to be recognized in a damaged scene in the tomb of Mereruka; she says: &quot;O Meri, would that thou might give me those [goodly(?)] fowl--as thou livest for me!&quot;72 His

14

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 12.

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

15

response is lost, as in the case of another example, which is even less complete.73 Here it is not the wife who speaks, but presumably a daughter. When the tomb owner travels on one of the larger boats that plies the length of the Nile, he travels alone, as also when he travels by land, in a palanquin, but there is at least one exception in the latter case.74 Among the few exceptions involving travel by water, the earliest, dating to the Fourth Dynasty, shows the husband and wife seated together in a boat that is both towed and rowed.75 A Fifth Dynasty tomb at Hemamiya (Fig. 13)76 is especially interesting because the husband and wife are rowed downstream in two separate boats, hers preceding his, on the west wall of the tomb, while on the wall opposite she appears alone in another boat (Fig. 14).77 Her high rank as &quot;king's daughter&quot; might explain this, although the title has been consistently erased before her name (see the terminal note, p. 47). Another exception, in a fragment of relief from the Sixth Dynasty tomb chapel of Nekhebu at Giza (Fig. 15),78 shows the owner seated on a barge towed by oarsmen in another boat; thus removed from the cacophany of their efforts, he listens in tranquility to a female harpist who plays, and perhaps sings, before him. She is a woman of some status, with the title rt nswt &quot;known to the king,&quot; and is probably his wife, in conformity to two scenes mentioned earlier.79 On the whole, however, the proper place of women was evidently thought to be in the home--or at any rate indoors. That is evident from the fact that, when any of the color has been preserved, reliefs, paintings and statuary give their skin a pale yellow hue, in contrast to their husbands, whose skin is generally red or reddish, indicating a more rigorous outdoor existence. As children, males have the same yellow hue as women, and so too when they are portrayed as portly men of older years, during which they were engaged in more sedentary activities.80 The attitude of women represented in statuary is similarly more passive than that of men; they are almost always empty-handed, lacking the batons of authority that men customarily hold. In the rare cases where their hands are fisted the object in the hand is not a staff but is the hieroglyph », representing a bolt of cloth.81 Two-dimensional representations generally show them holding, if anything, a stalk of lotus, and the stalk of lotus replaces the man's staff in those cases where a monument belonging to a man has been revised to suit a woman.82

16

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 13.

The religious beliefs concerning the hereafter of the deceased applied equally to men and women. The same funerary formulae appear on the false doors where offerings were deposited. Towards the end of the Old Kingdom women, like men, could become an &quot;akh&quot;--a transfigured spirit--in the next world; and in at least one case the feminine form &quot;akhet&quot; is used.83 But survival in the next world ultimately entailed identification with the male god Osiris, the father of the living king, who became king of the dead. So far as men are concerned, that identification was adumbrated fairly early in the Fifth Dynasty by the representations of rt-mourners at either end of the bier, impersonating the sisters of Osiris (of whom more will be said later); by the end of that dynasty it was attested in royal tombs by the Pyramid Texts, and in private tombs by the kingly regalia that is occasionally pictured among the funerary equipment, in-

Fig. 14.

2. The position of the wife and mother in tomb chapels

17

cluding collars with falcon terminals and pendants with uraeus-cobras.84 The identification of women with Osiris is first attested in the Pyramid Texts of Queen Neith and Wedjebten; here the name of the god precedes the name of the deceased, as an epithet, in spells invoking offerings.85 The same epithet began to be applied to the funerary monuments of non-royal men and women before the end of the Heracleopolitan Period, again in connection with the transmission of offerings.86 In the next world, as in this one, a woman could only reign by becoming a king.

Fig. 15.

18

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 16.

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

The social interrelation of men and women poses some questions that are difficult to answer. One is struck, for example, by the fact that references to &quot;the royal children&quot; are almost always specified, through the ideographic addition of ![, as pertaining to sons and daughters collectively. These references imply that the princes and princesses were brought up together87 and that their property was jointly administered.88 Yet the evidence of the tomb scenes suggests a separation of the sexes. There is a tendency, in the representations of wealthy households, for men to be waited on by men, women by women,89 although, in the latter case, women did not altogether replace men in this capacity. Queen Mersyankh III, for example, has a considerable entourage of women, but her steward and scribe is a man.90 The princess Hemet-Re, in one of Hassan's tombs at Giza, likewise has a male steward as well as a number of male scribes, and exceptionally has no female retinue at all.91 But there is ample evidence that women likewise served as stewards, and that they were in charge of storehouses and supplies such as food and cloth.92 From this class of evidence we also see that, while men prepared the master's bed, women made that of the mistress,93 and women might even carry their mistress' palanquin (Fig. 16).94 While men have male dwarfs in their employ, the dwarfs in the retinue of queens are female.95 Boys and girls play games separately, as seen in a familiar example from the tomb of Mereruka96--the only one that shows both. In tomb chapels of the Old Kingdom dancers also perform in separate groups of men and women, which perhaps relayed each other, and the female dancers may be supervised either by a man or woman called sb£/sb£t &quot;instructor.&quot;97 At least two female &quot;overseers of dancers&quot; are known and one &quot;overseer of singers,&quot;98 although male overseers of singers are more numerous.99 The professional musicians, and notably the pairs of singers and instrumentalists

19

20

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

(the singer giving signals to the other), are virtually always men.100 In the Old Kingdom groups of men played the harp, an open-ended flute (Arabic, nay) and a double-tubed wind instrument with the sound of an oboe (Arabic, zummara). Of these three, the harp is the only one played by women, other than such simple percussion instruments as clapsticks or the sistrum; only in scenes of later periods do we find them playing wind instruments such as the nay.101 It has already been noted that the women who play the harp are frequently identified as the wife or daughters of the tomb owner, but they do not necessarily play alone. In some cases they evidently join in with the male musicians.102 Other activities sometimes bring men and women together more closely, as will be seen from a brief summary of the three types of productive work in which women were engaged. The first, and by far most important of these was weaving, which was executed entirely by women, however, unlike the New Kingdom, when men were likewise employed in it.103 It is not represented as such, as it is in tombs of the Middle and New Kingdom, but is attested by scenes in which women are shown delivering cloth and receiving payment, usually in jewelry (Fig. 17).104 Furthermore several women are &quot;overseer of the house of weavers,&quot;105 although men also hold this title.106 The Old Kingdom hieroglyph for &quot;weaver&quot; ( ) is a seated woman who holds a long straight baton which has previously been identified as

Fig. 17.

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

21

a shuttle. In the meantime, however, much more detailed examples have been published (Fig. 18),107 and they show that the object is actually a scepter. Since it seems unlikely that a scepter as such would be attributed to a weaver, it evidently provides the phonetic element ¢ts. Composite hieroglyphs of this type, integrating a phonetic element with an ideograph, are well known from the Old Kingdom. The term ¢ts, or more precisely feminine ¢tst, probably designates the weaver as &quot;one who is rewarded&quot; or &quot;adorned.&quot;108 This interpretation is supported by the aforementioned scenes that show such women being given costly ornaments in payment for their services. They are not known to have enjoyed such particular esteem during later periods, and it is significant that this designation was no longer applied to weavers after the Old Kingdom.

Fig. 18.

Since linen was used for cloth, one might expect women to be involved in the harvest of flax, as they were to be in later periods, and one tomb of a woman, to be discussed presently, in fact shows her supervising this activity;109 it must be acknowledged, however, that her titles contain no reference to weavers. Women probably also made clothing, although no term for that activity has yet been identified. Oddly enough, men do the washing, as also in later periods.110 Another important, if somewhat humbler activity, is the making of bread, but this, along with the closely related production of beer, was usually done in cooperation with men. In the Old Kingdom women sometimes undertook virtually all the work of making bread; they are seen pounding and grinding the grain, making dough and heating the moulds for the loaves.111 Of these activities the one in which women are most frequently represented is grinding, and the model bakery and brewery of Meketre, dating to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, reduces the woman's role to this task.112 Its arduous nature is conveyed by an exceptionally realistic portrayal of two emaciated old women

22

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

on a false door probably dating to the Fifth Dynasty (Fig. 19).113 Only men are known to be called &quot;baker&quot; (rt¢).114 Occasionally, however, a woman helps the brewers and several tomb models show her straining the mash for this purpose.115

Fig. 19.

Unlike later periods, the winnowing and sieving of grain was always performed by women, perhaps in teams of five, for they are called d¡wt &quot;fivers.&quot;116 In this they are less directly associated with men, who merely pitch the straw and tidy up. There is no clear evidence that women participate actively in other aspects of harvesting. A female gleaner is shown on a fragment of relief from Saqqara, the date of which is possibly earlier than the Middle Kingdom, but that date is not certain.117 Although the evidence for barter in the market place is limited to eight sources, all from Saqqara, or near it, and all dating from the late Fifth to Sixth Dynasty, it is sufficient to show that women also participated in this activity. They appear in only half of the known examples, however, and as buyers they are outnumbered by men in a ratio of more than five to one, while only two women are represented as vendors.118 In the first of these two cases (Fig. 20)

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

23

Fig. 20.

one woman buys food from another in exchange for a bowl or its contents, while another fills the bowl of a male customer; there appears to be no caption.119 In the second (Fig. 21)120 a male buyer nibbles a leek or onion and the female vendor says &quot;Here's something, that you may drink because of it.&quot;121

Fig. 21.

24

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Of all the activities of women, their participation in the temple and funerary rituals was doubtless felt to be most important. In the temple services they hail the king as the &quot;mrt-singers of Upper and Lower Egypt,&quot; who, as early as the Fourth Dynasty, were under the command of a male director.122 A great many women were ¢mt-nr-priestesses of Hathor, or of Hathor and Neith, both of whom had cults in the Memphite area. The cult of Hathor was more widespread, however, with many local temples throughout the country,123 and she is the subject of hymns sung in the household by dancers (in the tomb of Kagemni at Saqqara)124 and by harpists (at Meir: Fig. 9).125 At Meir the wife of Ny-ankh-Pepy is a &quot;percussionist&quot; of the goddess (the word is nwt, meaning &quot;she who beats the rhythm&quot;),126 and at Thebes127 and Dendera128 priestesses of Hathor carry the sistrum that was particularly associated with her cult. And a priestess of Hathor at Saqqara, who wears the menat-necklace that often accompanies it, also carries baskets for other equipment, including an extra sistrum (Fig. 22).129 A male nw of Hathor is also known, however.130 Among the less common priestesses are a ¢mt-nr-priestess of Cheops131 and a ¢mt-nr of Ptah.132 From Akhmim we also know of a wrßt-priestess who evidently kept watch over the god Min,133 and a &quot;wife of Min&quot;134--the earliest example of a

Fig. 22

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

25

Fig. 23

divine consort, a distinction which was to assume great importance in the New Kingdom. A few women are also to be found among the men who perform the ceremonies for the king's jubilee in the Sun Temple of Neuserre at Abusir, but the nature of their duties is unclear.135 In short, women played an essential role in the temple rituals--particularly those of Hathor and Neith--even though they are not known to have held any administrative posts in this connection, or to have held the title of flry-¢bt &quot;lector priest.&quot; Women likewise played an important part in the funerary rituals. Here again they are known to have served as &quot;percussionists&quot; in the pyramid cult of the king.136 They doubtless also impersonated Isis and Nephthys at either end of the king's bier, as they do in non-royal scenes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (Fig. 23137). In this capacity each of the pair is called rt,138 the falcon known as a kite, whose soaring flight has given its name to the aeronautic toy of our

26

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

own culture. The Pyramid Texts (1280) describe the association between the falcon and the goddesses in these terms: &quot;the screecher139 comes, the kite comes, namely Isis and Nephthys; they have come in search of their brother Osiris, in search of their brother King Pepi.&quot; As mourners, women are also associated with the ßnt &quot;the acacia house,&quot; and in this capacity, as ßntt, they perform a funerary dance and give offerings.140 The term m£rt, applied to a number of attendants in the service of two queens, has also been taken to mean &quot;mourner,&quot; but that seems unlikely.141 It is equally difficult to interpret the curious ritual performed by a woman in the pyramid temple of Sahure; she applies eye-paint to one of a pair of bulls in the presence of the enthroned king.142 Women, like men, frequently served as &quot;servants of the ka,&quot; employing the feminine form ¢mwt-k£, and there were even, in at least two cases, female overseers of such officiants.143 Like their male counterparts, they enjoyed material benefits in return for maintaining the provision of offerings at the tomb.144 Since this is the only function attributed to the title, it has been taken to mean &quot;funerary priest,&quot; although that translation has been felt to be too circumscribed.145 Groups of women known as nr, of whom an individual member was a nrt, were attached to various cults, including the funerary cult.146 Their principal activity was singing and dancing. The same designation is given to women who sing and dance for the household in the scenes shown in tomb chapels, and women only are overseers of the nr and its activities, including the nr of the king. Since the term nr means &quot;restrain&quot; or &quot;confine,&quot;147 the term in question has been translated &quot;harem,&quot; but this meaning becomes rather problematic, as Del Nord has pointed out, when the nr belongs to a goddess such as Hathor or Bat. A label in a tomb at Deir el Gebrawi seems to refer to male dancers as nrt, but the use of the feminine ending at this period puts this evidence in doubt.148 Men were eventually involved in such groups, but probably not before the Heracleopolitan Period,149 when the two sexes evidently danced together, although physical contact was still confined to members of the same gender. A more modest role is played by women in the household service of other women, but in some cases, where the mistress is a queen or high-ranking princess, this role could convey a considerable degree of responsibility. Thus female stewards are to be found in the service of two queens, and another in the chapel of a princess within the mastaba of her husband Mereruka (Fig. 16).

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

27

The last source also shows a female &quot;inspector (i.e. a lesser overseer) of the treasure,&quot; an &quot;overseer of ornaments&quot; and an &quot;overseer of cloth.&quot;150 The final title occurs again among retainers in the chapel of the princess Idut. In the midst of these and other titles implying a degree of authority, the absence of female scribes is conspicuous. Several scribes are mentioned in Idut's chapel, but they are all men. Nor is it possible, as has sometimes been stated,151 that Idut herself can claim literacy on the basis of a scribal kit that is placed before her on a boat. The reliefs of this tomb were originally carved for a vizier named Ihy, whose figure has been replaced here as elsewhere, and the scribal kit belongs to him, as do the scribes. The retention of the scribes is not inappropriate, however, for it will be recalled that Queen Mersyankh III and the Princess Hemet-Re likewise have male scribes. The apparent exclusion of women from scribal activities is also borne out by the absence of female &quot;lector priests.&quot; Among the other titles of women are &quot;overseer of female doctors&quot; (probably for a queen mother) and &quot;overseer of the chamber of wigs.&quot;152 There is no further evidence for the first of these activities, but it is evidently to be taken quite seriously, since it occurs repeatedly on the false door of the woman who claims it. For the second title there is some related evidence: a female ¡r¡t-ßn¡ &quot;hairdoer&quot; is known153 and there is iconographic proof of her activity.154 There remains one occupational title that has not yet been explained: /nTMt. It appears in a mastaba at Giza, preceding the name of a woman who is also rt nswt &quot;known to the king,&quot; and therefore of a certain status (Fig. 24).155 The determinative of ¡nTMt represents a seated woman who holds on her lap a sizable object of rectangular shape, steadying it with both hands. Her hair seems to be confined by a kerchief, the gathered ends of which project behind her head, or else is simply tied at the back. Another woman, who is again rt nswt, is overseer of a plurality of ¡nTMwt; she is known from a small offering basin (Fig. 25).156 The word ¡nTMt is quite unknown in such a context, but it certainly designates an occupation of some importance, involving a number of women, and the only important feminine activity of which we have no evidence is midwifery.157 That activity would well explain the determinative, where the object held in the lap may represent one or both of the pair of blocks that served as a birthstool.158 The lack of iconographic evidence would then be understandable, for human birth is not represented among the scenes of daily life that are displayed on the walls of tomb chapels. And the binding of the hair would be

28

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 24

suitable for the procedures of a midwife. It is otherwise attributed to women engaged in rather menial tasks in the field159 or in the bakery.160 Another female overseer of midwives, named Khenti-kauwes, is apparently to be recognized on a second offering basin that, like the first, formerly belonged to the collection of George Michailides, although the title is, in this case, badly damaged (Fig. 26).161 The woman in question may possibly have been related to the other, named Meret-ib, but that cannot be confirmed. Since later evidence indicates that childbirth entailed the sequestration of the mother, and a fortnight of purification thereafter, it may seem remarkable that midwives would not be compromised by that association to the point that they were unmentionable. And indeed, there is no further mention of them beyond the Old Kingdom.162 But that is equally true of many of the other titles

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

29

that are attributed to women of the Old Kingdom, including the overseer of female doctors. And one may easily conceive of a situation in which the skill of a midwife was acknowledged to have saved the life of an infant despite great difficulty. That might explain the case of the woman who is designated simply as a midwife, yet had a more distinguished funerary monument than the two overseers who are known from libation basins.163 (nmt), the determinative It also remains to say something about Cg of which again shows a woman with bound hair,164 and is, like mnTMt, a term that is taken to concern nursing, although it has not yet been attested as an Old Kingdom title, nor has mnTMt, with one exception.165 Ónmt ultimately shared the determinative of the latter (_), but not until the Late Period.166 Like mnTMt, it appears frequently in the names of estates that were a source of offerings,167 and in one such case the sign is replaced by a woman who holds a stick in one hand while the other is raised to shield her face. As Junker has shown, this reduplicates the recurrent motif of a female baker tending a fire on which pottery moulds have been placed for the preparation of bread (cf. Fig. 7).168 He

Fig. 25

30

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

also notes that the Pyramid Texts (Pyr. 131) show (a loaf) in place of as the determinative of nmtt. It may be added that the Coffin Texts (Spell 329) bracket feminine nmtt and mas culine C g or C F g ø as servants of Osiris, and elsewhere (Spell 60) the nmtt-women have come bearing food (TMqw) to him as &quot;Lord of All,&quot; while another spell (1047) refers to baking C F g for him.169 This term for &quot;nurse&quot; also appears in feminine personal names, which always show the more usual determinative170 with one exception, where it is replaced by --, again representing a loaf.171 Although the names do not show the reduplicated t, this reappears in a Middle Kingdom example of the term as a feminine title,172 and it should presumably be understood as nmt(yt) &quot;concerned with nmtbread.&quot; Thus the term seems to refer more generally to nurture than does mnTMt, where the determinative shows a woman giving milk. Like the sign , representing the weaver, the sign preFig. 26 sumed to represent the midwife is not to be found beyond the Old Kingdom. And the same is very nearly true of , although this occurs in the name of a locality as late as the Twelfth Dynasty;173 also, albeit rarely, in the Coffin Texts.174 The status of non-royal women of high rank is indicated by one or another of three titles referring to the king,175 the ultimate source of all bounty and prestige. Two of them are feminine counterparts of masculine titles, although the two forms were not always in use at the same time and place. Rt nswt &quot;she who is known to the king&quot;176 is frequently attested throughout the country from the entire length of the Old Kingdom, while the use of the masculine form r nswt was discontinued in the south of Upper Egypt (Nomes 1­15) during the Sixth Dynasty and later.177 The male form reappeared in the Eleventh Dynasty, while the feminine form was less frequently employed after the Old Kingdom.178 Ípswt nswt &quot;noblewoman of the king&quot; is first known from the Sixth Dynasty, as is the more frequently used masculine counterpart, but the latter disappeared almost totally after the end of the Old Kingdom, while the feminine form continued, to some extent, in the Heracleopolitan Period. Most of the examples of the feminine form are from the provinces.179

3. Occupations and titles of non-royal women

31

Ôkrt (wTMtt) nswt &quot;(sole) ornament of the king,&quot; is an exclusively feminine designation that was applied occasionally to women at least as early as the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty180 and did not become very frequent until the end of the Old Kingdom, both at the Memphite cemeteries and in the provinces. It was commonly in use in the Heracleopolitan Period and continued through the Middle Kingdom and into the New Kingdom, as well as nearly the whole of the Eighteenth Dynasty.181 Some scholars have argued that the title means &quot;decorated by the king,&quot;182 despite the fact that a masculine equivalent would then be expected, since men also received jewelry from the king.183 My own preference for &quot;ornament of the king&quot; is based on the last consideration and on several more specific indications from the Heracleopolitan Period and later. At Dendera the sign for flkrt, originally representing an inverted alabaster jar, evolved into the form of a dancing girl,184 and on a coffin from the cemetery of Akhmim it is replaced by a mirror (used in dances as well as for self adornment).185 At Naga ed-Deir the retinue of Hathor was sometimes referred to as flkrwt,186 while they were called nfrwt &quot;beauties&quot; at Kom el Hisn in the Middle Kingdom,187 probably with the same meaning. Finally, at Bersha, a Middle Kingdom official says that he was &quot;one who put the seal on the (female) ornaments, overseer of the king's (private) quarters (¡p£t).&quot;188 Here the flkrwt are sequestered women who entertained the king by their grace as well as their beauty, for the same official is concerned with singers and dancers. It seems unlikely, however, that many of the provincial women who called themselves &quot;sole ornament of the king&quot; had actually been at the court, particularly during the Heracleopolitan Period. The honorific use of the title z£t nswt &quot;king's daughter&quot; in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties will be taken up in the terminal note. In this connection it may be noted, however, that the only prestigious titles conferred by kinship or marriage are those that associate a woman with the king; along with &quot;king's daughter,&quot; real or honorific, these are mwt nswt &quot;king's mother&quot; and ¢mt nswt &quot;king's wife,&quot; scilicet &quot;queen.&quot; There is no parallel for the use of &quot;la Générale&quot; or &quot;la Présidente&quot; in French, or &quot;die Frau Doktor&quot; in German. Feminine counterparts are known for such masculine titles of rank as ¢£ty-TM &quot;count&quot; (f. ¢£tyt-TM) but in the Old Kingdom these too were bestowed only by direct relationship to the king. Thus we can be sure that feminine administrative titles of this period are to be taken at face value.

32

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

At the opposite end of the social spectrum, the condition of servitude, serfdom or slavery remains somewhat obscure, but two of the terms that were used (mrt, ¢m/¢mt) were applied to both sexes. There is inscriptional evidence, both for the Old Kingdom and the Heracleopolitan Period, that young girls were apt to be pressed into service.189

4. Personal names

4. Personal names

A great many names of women of the Old Kingdom190 are similar to those of men. Some very common pet names are identical in both cases (/t¡, Bb¡, Ppy, Tt¡) as well as some that make a statement (TMn-Ówfw &quot;Cheops lives,&quot; Nn-sr-k£.¡ &quot;My ka does not rest,&quot; Ny-TMn-Ìt¢r &quot;A possessor of life is Hathor,&quot; fem. Nfr-t-mdw &quot;May the first of the ten [days of the week] be happy,&quot;191 masc. Nfr-£bd &quot;May the monthly feast be happy&quot;192). But the masculine name more frequently has a distinctive feminine equivalent, as in the case of modern names such as English Robert/Roberta, French Henri/Henriette, German Wilhelm/Wilhelmina: Nfr/Nfrt &quot;Good&quot; or &quot;Beautiful,&quot; Snb/Snbt &quot;Healthy,&quot; Ìm/ Ìmt-RTM &quot;Servant-of-Re,&quot; Nfr-sßm.f/s &quot;His/her guidance is good,&quot; Nfr-k£w.f/s &quot;His/her kas are good,&quot; Ìtp(.¡)-¢r.f/s &quot;I am content with him/her,&quot;193 /n¡-¡t.f, /n¡t-¡t.s &quot;He/She who brings back his/her father.&quot; It should be noted, in the last case, that there is, curiously, no evidence for /n¡t-mwt.s &quot;She who brings back her mother.&quot; Occasionally the feminine ending t seems to be added more mechanically to a masculine name, as in the case of Mdw-nfr/nfrt &quot;who speaks well,&quot; where one might have expected the feminine ending to have been applied to the first word.194 A still more striking example is /w.f-n(.¡)t, on a stela that probably belongs to the very end of the Old Kingdom (Dyn. VIII);195 the meaning is &quot;He is mine,&quot; and the feminine version would more logically have become /w.s-n(.¡) &quot;She is mine,&quot; as it frequently did in the Middle Kingdom. In the case of theophoric names, those of a woman tend to refer to a goddess, and especially Hathor, while those of men tend to refer to gods. Among the fairly numerous exceptions a masculine example has already been quoted (Ny-TMn-Ìt¢r) as well as a feminine one (Ìmt-RTM). By the same token theophoric names referring to kings were predominantly held by men, although they were not infrequently given to women,196 as most commonly exemplified by TMn-n.s-Ppy &quot;(King) Pepy lives for her.&quot; Names referring to nswt &quot;king&quot; were also less commonly given to women than to men, e.g. Nfrt-¢£-nswt paralleled by masc. Nfr-¢£-nswt &quot;A good/beautiful one is behind 33

34

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

the king.&quot;197 In the case of women an allusion to the king is more frequently made through the intermediary of the feminine Nbty (f)&quot;the two mistresses,&quot; i.e. the tutelary goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt who are identified with the king's crown, and thereby with his own person.198 An indirect allusion of this kind is to be found in ÓTM¡-mrr-Nbty &quot;He whom the two mistresses love appears (in splendor).&quot; In other cases the allusion is more immediate, as in Ny-k£-Nbty &quot;A possessor of ka(s) is the pair of mistresses.&quot; A few names referring to the cult of a divinity are worth considering in this brief résumé. The most perplexing, belonging to a Sixth Dynasty woman of Dendera, is Rdw-¡¢w, lit. &quot;Feet of cattle.&quot;199 This clearly has some connection with the local goddess Hathor, but cannot refer to her directly;200 perhaps it is a truncated version of a longer name. At a somewhat later date Denderite women were called Nfr-ntt &quot;The herd (of Hathor) is beautiful,&quot;201 (attested in Dyn. VI at Akhmim)202 and Nfrt-¡¢w &quot;Beautiful of cattle.&quot;203 An allusion to Hathor is also to be recognized in Tyt &quot;She who is drunk,&quot; and in onomatopoetic Zßzßt &quot;Sistrum,&quot;204 while the name Ónwt refers to a woman who plays this instrument, &quot;Percussionist.&quot;205 Another name that relates to a woman's activity is Ónmt(), apparently meaning &quot;Nurse&quot; or &quot;Nourisher,&quot;206 attested also in archaic Ó(n)mt(t)-Pt¢ &quot;Nourisher of Ptah.&quot;207 Names like Ôkrt¡ &quot;Ornament&quot; (n. 186 above) might be added to these. Apart from this evidence there is relatively little about feminine names that is particularly distinctive. One woman is called K£(.¡)-m-¢mt-(¡)m(.¡) &quot;My ka is the womb within me.&quot;208 Another is K£(.¡)-m-msw(.¡) &quot;My ka is in(?) my children,&quot;209 as compared with men who are more usually K£(.¡)-m-r¢w(.¡) &quot;My ka is in(?) my people&quot; or K£(.¡)-m-snw(.¡) &quot;My ka is in(?) my brothers.&quot; Her name evidently expresses a maternal feeling (either on the part of the mother who gave the name, or prospectively attributed to the child herself); one might interpret it more freely as &quot;My strength lies in my children.&quot; Possibly a prospective maternal role is also to be seen in Îf£t.sn &quot;Their nourishment,&quot; which is not known to have a male equivalent.210 &quot;Their&quot; presumably refers to the household, as also in Nb.sn and Ìnwt.sn, &quot;Their master,&quot; &quot;Their mistress.&quot; As Ranke has observed, quite a few names express a sentiment uttered by the mother or midwife at the moment of birth.211 To the examples he cites may be added Ms.n.¡ &quot;One Whom I have borne&quot;212 and Ms.n-k£.¡ &quot;One whom my ka has given birth.&quot;213 More frequently such names employ the verb sf, literally

4. Personal names

35

&quot;loosen,&quot; which is applied to parturition: Nfr-sf-Pt¢ &quot;One whom Ptah delivers is good,&quot;214 Nfr-sf &quot;He who is delivered is good.&quot;215 Some names even reflect circumstances immediately prior to or during parturition: /¡-mw &quot;The fluid comes&quot;216 or &quot;May fluid come;&quot;217 Ìw¡.f r.¡ &quot;He beats against me;&quot;218 Pflr.s &quot;She turns about;&quot;219 Ìbs &quot;One who is covered.&quot;220 There are also a few masculine names that clearly refer to the mother of a newborn son: /¢y-n.s &quot;She has a calf,&quot; (where the word for &quot;calf&quot; alludes to the son of Hathor). And /w.f-n-mwt.f &quot;He belongs to his mother.&quot;221 Among the short &quot;pet names,&quot; which may, in some cases have been assumed later in life, there is one that may have been patterned on a husband's name; he has the very common name Mm¡, while she has the uncommon feminine equivalent, Mm¡t.222 Terms designating various animals are sometimes applied to both men and women.223 M¡wt &quot;Cat&quot; is the name of a woman on a provincial tombstone dating to the end of the Old Kingdom,224 whereas men of the Old Kingdom were often called M£¡ &quot;Lion.&quot;225 Other feminine examples of a more surprising nature include Mz¢t &quot;Crocodile,&quot; Dbt &quot;Hippopotamus,&quot; and Hrt &quot;Hyena,&quot;226 but all of these have masculine counterparts, though some not earlier than the Middle Kingdom.227 It is a curious fact that the name Zßßn/Zßn &quot;Lotus,&quot; which goes back to the Old Kingdom, is only known for men in that period, and is rarely applied to women later,228 since this word is the origin, via the Old Testament, of our own Susan.229 Only in much later times, at the end of the Ramesside Period, was a woman called Ìrrt &quot;Blossom,&quot;230 a word which may have been the origin of Lily.231

36

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 27

5. Some exceptional cases

5. Some exceptional cases

Among the exceptional cases that are now to be considered, there are

none so remarkable as that of a woman named Nebet. On a Sixth Dynasty stela from Abydos (Fig. 27)232 she is given the two highest titles of rank, followed by a combination of three titles designating her as vizier. Moreover each of the titles, or group of titles, is reinforced by kinship to the gods; she is said to be a daughter of Geb, of Merhu, of Thoth, and finally, as &quot;Companion of the King of Lower Egypt,&quot; she is &quot;daughter of Horus.&quot; Despite these lofty titles, and her position on the dominant left side of the stela, she is represented on a smaller scale than the man opposite her, who shares the offering formula and who is known, from other sources, to be her husband. He has the lower of her two titles of rank, but holds both these titles on another stela from Abydos,233 where he and his wife are identified as the parents of a vizier named Djau, along with two women who married Pepy I and were the mothers of Merenre and Pepy II. On the stela shown here he has the title &quot;Father of the God&quot;234 by virtue of his illustrious daughters, while on the stela naming the daughters he is &quot;beloved of the god,&quot; an epithet that is elsewhere associated with that title.235 In the present case he is also &quot;Overseer of the Pyramid City,&quot; a title that is normally held by viziers, and thus he seems to have exercised some, if not all, of his wife's functions.236 It is in fact likely that her titles are wholly honorific, designed to enhance the status of a commoner who became the mother-in-law of one king, and the grandmother of two others; the stela was made after the second of these two kings began his reign.237 Yet there must be some further reason for her to have had such honors heaped upon her rather than upon her husband. Her final title and epithet suggest that she may have benefited from an intimate relationship with the king--one that brought her wealth and influence. It may be added that the same couple seem to be mentioned as the parents of yet another vizier;238 here she is only a

37

38

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

&quot;noblewoman of the king,&quot; though he again has the highest title of rank, with the addition of the word &quot;truly.&quot;

The other cases that merit special attention are iconographic rather than inscriptional. A Fifth Dynasty tomb chapel at Saqqara surprisingly shows two women wielding the steering oar of a cargo ship (Fig. 28).239 In one case240 she is being offered bread by a boy who squats in front of her. To judge from the direction of the hieroglyphs, both of the statements accompanying them are spoken by the woman. They are by no means easy to interpret, but the first statement seems to be: &quot;Give bread (with) thy arm,&quot; and the second &quot;(but) don't obstruct my face with it while I am putting to shore.&quot; The ship in the register below her shows the more familiar motif of a woman nursing her child.241

Fig. 28

5. Some exceptional cases

39

Fig. 29

In the chapel of Nefer and Ka-hay at Saqqara, a woman sits in a pillared canopy which is, rather curiously, the extension of an open pavilion in which cuts of meat are suspended (Fig. 29).242 Since a small naked girl stands before her, holding her hand, she may represent the wife of the principal tomb owner rather than an instructor or supervisor of the dancers whom she is watching. That alternative is also borne out by the fact that the wife does not accompany her husband at the end of the register in question. One might expect her to be identified by a caption, but all such captions are omitted throughout the scenes in this chapel. If the wife is indeed represented here, the case is most unusual. A false door from Busiris in the Delta (Fig. 30),243 perhaps to be dated to the Eighth Dynasty, emphasizes, in a very interesting way, the fact that while aged women are sometimes represented (most frequently in the feminine version of the ideogram for &quot;being old&quot;),244 they are never corpulent, as men so often are. False doors of the same period and earlier contrast the tomb owner as a slender young man and in portly middle age.245 At the bottom of the false door from Busiris the same contrast is paralleled by showing the female owner as a naked girl, her hair in a pigtail terminated by a disk,246 and as a thin old woman with pendant breasts. At the top of the door she conforms to the ideal of young womanhood that is customary.

40

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 30

5. Some exceptional cases

41

The tombs of non-royal women are not, in general, of great interest, but several remnants of an outstanding exception have survived--unfortunately of unknown provenance, though undoubtedly from one of the Memphite cemeteries.247 One of the two more substantial pieces of relief that have been recovered (Pl. 1a) shows a detail that has already been mentioned: the tomb owner supervises the harvesting of flax. The other piece (Pl. 1b) shows her gathering lotus blossoms in the marshes as in the scene at Deir el Gebrawi;248 her papyrus skiff is punted by a man, but a female servant offers her a drink and another woman sits between them. A smaller piece of relief (Pl. 2a) shows three female retainers bringing lotus blossoms, necklaces, a ewer and basin, while a similar relief (Pl. 2b), around the corner from the harvesting scene, shows other women bringing necklaces only.249 There is no mention of a husband on these reliefs or on the elements of a false door (Pl. 3), or on a second false door from the same chapel (Pl. 4),250 which shows the woman's parents. The owner is &quot;She who is Known to the King, Priestess of Hathor, Tenant Landholder (ntyt-ß ), Ìtpt.&quot; This confirms the fact that the tomb belonged exclusively to the woman in question. It is true that we may not have a complete picture of the decoration of the chapel, but it seems to be devoted to feminine preoccupations to an unusual degree. An even more exceptional scene is to be found in the rock-cut funerary chapel of a woman named Neferty, nicknamed Ity, at Qasr es-Sayyad. It is one of two scenes recorded in 1839 be Nestor L'Hôte.251 As may be seen from Fig. 31, they were so imperfectly preserved that the copies are necessarily sketchy, but they remain the most complete record of this chapel that has survived. The more unusual of the two scenes is described as: &quot;viewing the boomeranging of flocks of birds (by) The King's Sole Ornament, Priestess of Hathor, One Revered with Hathor, Neferty.&quot; The figure engaged in this activity is presumably the woman herself, since her titles and name also appear above it; and if so, it is quite unique, for in all the many other occurrences of this subject the fowling is undertaken by a man who is again the owner of the tomb. There is, however, an ambiguity in the caption, which speaks of &quot;viewing&quot; the activity, rather than performing it, as is always the case when a man is portrayed.252 The second scene is like one described earlier, from the chapel of Hetep (Pl. 1b), but here it is supplemented by a caption: &quot;viewing the activities of the marshlands,&quot; and instead of being presented with a bowl, Neferty is

42

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 31

5. Some exceptional cases

43

offered myrrh by a servant who must have occupied the damaged area at the lower right. Behind her stands a pigtailed daughter name Bebi, who shares two of her titles. To judge from another of her titles, &quot;noblewoman of the king,&quot; her tomb is to be dated to the Sixth Dynasty, as are other tombs in the same necropolis. She was also ntt-ß &quot;tenant landholder&quot; of the estates belonging to a royal pyramid, and the same connection with a royal pyramid is attested for several other women of the same period, associating them with the funerary cult of Pepy I, Merenre and Pepy II.253 A scene above the entrance to Itet's tomb at Medum surprisingly shows her husband Nefer-maat working a fowling net for her, while her children present her with the catch he has made (Fig. 32).254 In his discussion of this scene Junker points out how exceptional it is that Nefer-maat should be engaged in so menial a task, one that is performed by ordinary workers in his own tomb and in other tombs of the Old Kingdom;255 later tombs of this period sometimes show the tomb owner obtaining fowl for his wife, but in these cases he does so as a sportsman, using a throwstick, as described earlier. It should also be noted that, in the same tomb of Itet, Nefer-maat, accompanied by his wife, actively engages in a hunt, holding three dogs in leash.256 The most surprising piece of iconographic evidence concerning non-royal women is certainly the representation of a besieged town in a tomb at Deshasha (Fig. 33).257 I have redrawn only the uppermost register, which is the one most clearly preserved; a woman stabs an Egyptian bowman at the left; a second woman leads a boy, who carries a dagger, towards a man (probably elderly) who breaks the bow of another assailant. Although the details of the lower registers are less clear, they certainly show women overpowering other invaders in one way or another. All this is quite different from an otherwise similar representation at Saqqara.258 Perhaps the point of the Deshasha version is less to extol the bravery of the women than to deprecate the ineffective efforts of the men of the town who fight outside the walls. But there is no reason to doubt the historical veracity of the women's resistance, for there are many other examples of this kind in more recent history. Apart from the exceptional case of Jean d'Arc, who delivered Orleans from the English in 1429, one thinks of the woman of Toulouse who killed Simon de Montfort with a stone when he besieged that city in 1218, of Marie Foure, who raised the siege of Peronne in 1536, and of the women of Geneva who held off the Savoyards during the Escalade of 1602.

44

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

Fig. 32

Fig. 33

6. Conclusions

Reflected for the most part in tomb chapels of which men were the primary owners, our picture of Egyptian women of the third millennium can hardly be adequate, but it is possible to fill in some of the principal features: (1) The maternal role is, not surprisingly, given a good deal of emphasis, and it is doubtless reinforced by a woman's right to own and dispose of property. There is also an emphasis on maternal lineage, which is more clearly evidenced from the Middle Kingdom, when parentage was much more commonly specified. (2) Although the activities of the two sexes tended to be separated, a wife (and only one wife as a rule) was not cloistered, but accompanied her husband in his recreations and, to some extent, in his more serious preoccupations as well. (3) The less favored majority were engaged in a variety of occupations, including weaving, baking and brewing, winnowing, dancing, and domestic service in the retinue of wealthier women. They were also apt to be conscripted for labor, as were men. (4) The most important productive activity of women was weaving, and the term applied to the female weavers alludes to the special consideration and remuneration that they enjoyed. Although weaving was again performed almost exclusively by women in the Middle Kingdom,259 something of that prestige may have been lost, for the term formerly applied to them was no longer used. It is perhaps more understandable that the term for midwives is also unknown from later periods, and the Old Kingdom evidence is small. (5) In contrast to the Middle Kingdom, women of the Old Kingdom were involved in many of the aforementioned activities in an administrative capacity,260 as overseers of weavers, overseers of midwives, overseers of supplies such as food and cloth, overseers of dancers, more rarely of singers, and even, in at least one case, as overseer of doctors. In many instances these administrative titles were held in the service of queens. And in all cases where such titles refer to persons, the persons were other women. It is doubtless because women 45

46

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

exercised a degree of authority over their own affairs that midwives could be acknowledged for the first and last time in pharaonic history. (6) At home well-to-do women played the harp and sang for their parents or for their husbands. They were often distinguished by honorific titles, generally referring to the king, and by priestly titles, generally referring to Neith and/or Hathor. They played a significant part in the temple and funerary rituals, impersonating the divine mrt-singers of Upper and Lower Egypt in the first case, and, in the second case, impersonating Isis and Nephthys as rt-mourners. (7) Since there is, however, no evidence of female scribes, women could not participate in the government bureaucracy or in temple administration to an appreciable extent. It may be added that, while the generic use of &quot;man&quot; is sometimes felt to be offensively exclusive in our own society, the Egyptians did not seem to have that problem. The equivalent term rm &quot;people&quot; may be followed solely by the male determinative,261 but that fact makes the more usual addition of the female determinative all the more significant. Thus the good opinion of women, as well as that of men, is sought in all sorts of moralistic statements such as: &quot;I never did what people dislike;&quot;262 &quot;I was one who did what all people praise;&quot;263 &quot;I was beloved of people;&quot;264 &quot;I never did (or said) what people contest.&quot;265

6. Conclusions

Note on the erasure of the title z£t nswt &quot;king's daughter&quot;

The consistent erasure of the title z£t nswt in a late Fifth Dynasty tomb at Hemamiya (Figs. 13­14)266 is not an altogether isolated phenomenon. In his final publication of La Chapelle funeraire de Neferirtenef,267 Baudouin van de Walle has called attention to alterations in the inscriptions of the tomb owner's wife on the southern false door. He specifies traces of an erased initial Õ and, further down, the sign °. In addition one can see traces of , before Õ and, a little below this group, further traces of C and another . As shown in Fig. 34268 it is clear that the inscription originally began with the title z£t nswt nt flt.f &quot;king's daughter, of his body.&quot; Possibly the final suffix ° was omitted on the right side since the following titles were probably unchanged, and here they begin at a higher level. The chapel in question, from Saqqara, may well be contemporaneous with that of Hemamiya,269 and it may be wondered if, at this date, some objection was felt to the honorific use of the title in question.270 Another point of interest is the unusual arrangement of the signs in the example from Saqqara. This arrangement, evidently designed to improve the composition of the group in columnar inscriptions,271 first appears on Saqqara stelae of the Third Dynasty which name two daughters of Djoser272 and again on the stela of Kai-aperef, from Sneferu's valley temple at Dahshur.273 It occurs only once in the mastaba of Nefer-maat at Medum,274 but was more frequently used at Giza in the Fourth Dynasty275 and into the earlier years of the Fifth.276 Thenceforth it seems to have become obsolete, probably in consequence of the increasing use of horizontal lines in hieroglyphic inscriptions. The present example is an exceptionally late survival, although an even later one is attested, dating to the very end of the Sixth Dynasty.277

22. The last words are m flt(.¡), lit. &quot;in my body,&quot; but cf. ¡myw flt &quot;thoughts,&quot; (Faulkner, CD, 200). The parallel use of flt and ¡b was noted long ago by Breasted, ZÄS 39 (1901), 45­48. For an Old Kingdom example, see Urk. I, 39 (15): &quot;for God has given him wisdom of thought&quot; (s¡£ t m flt). 23. Edel, Hieroglyphische Inschriften, fig. 4 and p. 20. 24. Epron-Wild, Tombeau de Ti I, pl. 39. 25. Reisner, Giza I, pl. 61(f). 26. &quot;I made this (the tomb) for my wife, One Known to the King, Sut-kau, inasmuch as she is revered by me&quot; (Reisner's Giza tomb G 2851, Archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). 27. Ancient Egypt in the MMJ, pp. 73­91. 28. Even in the context of her offering scene the wife's children are sometimes called &quot;his:&quot; LD II, 109; B. van de Walle, Neferirtenef, pl. 6; D. Silverman, ZÄS 110 (1983), p. 81, fig. 1 and pl. 1. 29. Ancient Egypt in the MMJ, pp. 158f. and figs. 1­2. For this phenomenon see also Silverman, op. cit., p. 85 (v). 30. M. Alliot, Rapport sur les fouilles de Tell Edfou, 1933 (Cairo 1935), p. 25; here sons are attributed to mothers of different names, none of these corresponding to those of either of the two women known to be wives of the tomb owner. For the later use of the term ¢bswt for &quot;concubine&quot; see T.G.H. James, Hekanakhte Papers (New York 1962), p. 12. The example from Edfu is noted by Naguib Kanawati, &quot;Polygamy in the Old Kingdom?,&quot; SAK 4 (1976), p. 150f. along with that of his son Q£r, who had three wives (not four; Ónt.s is a misreading of Ónt¡, so that a and c are identical). The evidence for yet another wife (James, BM Stelae I2, pl. 33 [1]) seems highly doubtful since the titulary of this Q£r is very different from that of the one at Edfu. In general Kanawati's other evidence might be explained by the loss of a wife in childbirth--a situation which has only become uncommon in the 20th century. He sets forth a more pointed argument for the existence of the second wife (or concubine) in &quot;Was Jbj of Deir el Gebrawi a Polygamist?&quot; (SAK 5 [1977], pp. 123­129), but this turns on the supposition that the title smsw snw &quot;senior physician&quot; does not occur elsewhere in Deir el Gebrâwi; it is in fact held by a son of ÎTMw I named Bb¡ (Vol. II, pl. 9). 31. Fischer, Kush 9 (1961), p. 55 and n. 17, referring in particular to Athribis, pl. 7 (= Kanawati, Hagarsa III, pl. 42). This case is also discussed by W.K. Simpson, &quot;Polygamy in Egypt in the Middle Kingdom?,&quot; JEA 60 (1974), p. 100f., although he agrees that it is earlier than the period in question. 32. Cf. Edel, &quot;Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie der ägyptischen Inschriften des Alten Reiches,&quot; MDAIK 13 (1944), §§ 40, 41. 33. Ibid., § 38. 34. Brothers represented: Duell, Mereruka I, pls. 23(a), 88 (6 brothers); CG 1482 (3 brothers),

mother alone, and only 5% name the father alone. Battiscombe Gunn notes that Middle Kingdom stelae sometimes express filiation by writing ¡r.n mwt.f or ¡rt.n mwt.s, without supplying a name (JEA 16 [1930], 155, n. 4). It seems unlikely that this was because it was &quot;deemed not desirable to give the name of a person's mother,&quot; but rather because the name of the mother was so nearly always provided that the scribe felt obliged to acknowledge, in such cases, that he did not know what it was. Cf. Ranke, PN II, 9, 10. 51. Mother shares son's tomb: CG 1501 and LD, Text I, p. 19 (two false doors, the second entirely inscribed for a woman whose son is named as the donor, on the other she again appears alone at the offering table, but the son's name is on the crossbar below, and the jambs are inscribed for him and for his wife; in both cases he is &quot;revered&quot; or &quot;possessor of reverence with his mother&quot;); Junker, Gîza VI, fig. 32 (the second, and largest false door is dominated by the owner's mother, who is shown opposite the owner in the offering scene; she is shown four times in all; on the right are three generations of ancestors, including herself and her husband); Hassan, Gîza I, fig. 184; ibid. VI/3, p. 165 and pl. 69c (false door of the owner's mother); H.G. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 19 (the tomb owner made false doors for his father, his wife and his mother-in-law, the last in pl. 4); CG 1306 (double offering slab for owner and mother); CG 1394 (stela of a woman dedicated by her grandson, the son of her daughter); Berlin 9055 (Bulletin du Centenaire, Supplément au BIFAO 81 [1981], 235­38, a stela of the late Heracleopolitan Period, dedicated to a mother by her son). 52. Women as donors: In addition to the two cases mentioned earlier, on p. 5 and notes 42, 43, as well as one to be mentioned presently (n. 54), see Urk. I, p. 32 (6­7), where the tomb was made by a daughter and son(-in-law?), and Kanawati, Hawawish VI, fig. 23 (a daughter and brother); Hassan Gîza I, fig. 172 (wife). In two cases a wife provided a statue for her husband: CG 376 (Urk. I, 73), and CG 190. In another case a man's statue was supplied by &quot;his sister of the estate:&quot; MIO 7 (1960), 301, fig. 2. A woman had an offering basin made for a grandmother: Kaplony, MIO 14 (1962), 177 and fig. 4. Another woman made one for her husband: Junker, Gîza VI, fig. 94; and a third offering basin, less complete, likewise mentions a woman as the donor: Martin, Hetepka, p. 33 (82) and pl. 32. For the Heracleopolitan Period there are at least two more cases: University Museum, Philadelphia, E 17814, from Dendera (a sister), and Dunham, Naga-ed-Dêr Stelae, p. 96 (daughter). 53. Many recorded in Urk. I: pp. 9 (4­7; 13­16), 15 (15­17, for mother and father; cf. James, BM Stelae I2, pls. 8 [1]), 34 (4­6; 12­13), 40­41, 165 (89), 176 (6­7; 11; 13), 227 (6­7), 228 (11, grandson; 16­17, owner's name is Wt£), 229 (7, Heracleopolitan Period; 12­13; 16), 230 (6­7; 10; 13; 17), 264 (4­6; 17­18), 265 (4­5), 267 (8ff.); some further examples in Fischer, &quot;Five Inscriptions of the Old Kingdom,&quot; ZÄS 105 (1978), pp. 50, n. 42 and 51, fig. 6. 54. Brooklyn Museum of Art 86.226.29, previously published by R. Fazzini in Miscellanea Wilbouriana I (1972), 33­34 and fig. 1. I am indebted to Dr. Fazzini for the photograph and for his permission use it here. 55. Hassan, Gîza IV, fig. 61; cf. note 35 above; Reisner, &quot;The Servants of the Ka,&quot; BMFA 32

90. Dunham and Simpson, op. cit., figs. 3b, 7, 9, 12; similarly Junker, Gîza VII, fig. 31 (a male overseer of funerary priests presents a papyrus document). 91. Hassan, Gîza VI/3, figs. 40­45. 92. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 70 (1­8). For the female stewards of Nbt see now Munro, Doppelgrab, pls. 13, 17; also Ónwt, pl. 11. Yet another female steward is probably to be recognized in the person holding a drum in Fig. 13 above, for the contour of the body is decidedly feminine, and the titles and name could belong to either sex. The close-cropped head is equally undistinctive. 93. Dunham and Simpson, op. cit., fig. 8; there are many examples where men make the master's bed: Junker, Gîza IV, fig. 10A; Hassan, Gîza IV, fig. 81 (= LD II, 14); Hassan, Saqqara II, fig. 39; Duell, Mereruka, pl. 92, etc. 94. Cf. Wresz., Atlas III, pl. 11. The drawing was made by the late Alexander Badawy, along with a complete documentation of the subordinate chapels B and C in the mastaba of Mereruka, but none of this has been published and it has not been possible, thus far, to find out what has become of it. 95. Athribis, pl. 1 (= Kanawati, Hagarsa I, pl. 18); Z.Y. Saad, &quot;Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Saqqara (1939­1940),&quot; ASAE 40 (1941), p. 683 and pl. 79 (Nbt = Munro, Doppelgrab, pl. 14); Simpson, Kawab, fig. 72 (Mersyankh III); cf. also Junker, Gîza X, fig. 46. 96. Duell, Mereruka, pls. 164­165; nearly all the other examples of children at play show boys only, but there does seem to be a least one exception. Although Simpson, Qar and Idu, p. 25, describes the pair of figures at the top center of his pl. 24 and fig. 38 as &quot;two boys with intertwined arms,&quot; both the naked figures lack male genitals, which are clearly displayed by all the boys on either side of them. 97. Male &quot;instructor:&quot; Hassan, Saqqara I, fig. 7; Gîza I, p. 67 and pl. 44 (1). Female instructor: Fischer, JEA 67 (1981), p. 167f. 98. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 71. One of the overseers of dancers (Hassan, Gîza II, fig. 228), is also &quot;overseer of entertainment,&quot; and this is evidently paralleled, at the end of the Heracleopolitan Period, by a ¢ryt-tp hrw-¡b &quot;headmistress of pleasures (Kanawati, Hagarsa III, pls. 20­21). 99. There is evidence of a lesser male overseer (s¢ ) of dancers (PM III2, p. 571); the title 2 g á L Ø given by Murray, Names and Titles, pl. 20 (cf. PM III , p. 895, &quot;overseer of the chamber of dancers&quot;) is not beyond question, since it is preceded and followed by a lacuna. For male &quot;overseers of singers&quot; see CG 1328, 1420, 1421, 1436, 1461 (all from Mariette, Mastabas, E 6­ 7); MFA 21.3081 (Reisner, Giza I, pl. 65b); Hassan, Gîza II, fig. 226; LD II, pl. 59; Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, pls. 42a (&quot;overseer of singers of the Two Houses&quot;), 26, 29­32 (&quot;director&quot;). Also lesser supervisors (s¢): Mariette, Mastabas, p. 154, with the obscure addition of tm£t &quot;mat(?);&quot; Hassan, Gîza VI/3, p. 133 (CG 57173); VII, fig. 38; Junker, Gîza VII, fig. 12 (discussed on pp. 36­38); Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, pls. 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 39; Posener-Kriéger, Archives II, pp. 385, 605. In some cases the singers are specified as men:

Notes

65

Reisner, Giza I, pl. 65b (determinative !!!); Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, p. 46 (determinative red-skinned, wearing beard and sidelock). 100. The clearest exceptions are to be seen in CG 1778 (Dahchour II, pl. 25, female harpist, male singer) and CG 1414 (both female). 101. For female nay-players of the Middle Kingdom see Davies­Gardiner, Antefo°er, pl. 23, and Meir VI, pl. 19; for another of the New Kingdom see The Epigraphic Survey, The Tomb of Kheruef (Chicago 1980), pl. 34. 102. CG 1778 (note 100 above); Junker, Gîza VI, fig. 38b; Simpson, Qar and Idu, fig. 38; LD II, pl. 109. 103. Davies, Seven Private Tombs, pl. 35 (TT 133); &quot;The Town House in Ancient Egypt,&quot; MMS I (1929), p. 234 (TT 104); Nefer-hotep I, pl. 60 (TT 49). 104. Men and women bringing cloth: Junker, Gîza V, fig. 7­8; cloth is delivered from the house of weavers by men; a record is made by scribes, and men and women are paid for their services in jewelry; Junker compares a scene in the Louvre mastaba of Akhty-hotep, his fig. 9 (Ziegler Akhethetep, pp. 116­19), where cloth is brought by men, and women alone receive jewelry. In ibid., fig. 11 (= LD Erg.bd, 34; Hassan, Gîza IV, fig. 82), the same theme is also recognized, while in fig. 10 (= LD II, pl. 103), shown here in Fig. 17, the delivery of cloth is also rewarded by unguent and food. See also Meir V, pl. 15, where scribes are &quot;registering the production of female servants (¢mwt) for the requirement of the month: 84 (bolts of cloth);&quot; the bolts of cloth are brought by &quot;overseers of linen;&quot; cf. Fischer, JARCE 13 (1976), pp. 11­12. The Louvre mastaba (Ziegler, loc. cit.) similarly refers to &quot;viewing the production (TMwy) of weavers.&quot; This meaning of TMwy is discussed further in Fischer, Egyptian Studies III, p. 180. 105. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, pp. 71­72, to which add Moussa and Altenmüller, Nianchchnum, fig. 11 (three women who are &quot;overseers of the house of weavers,&quot; while one man is an under-supervisor [¡my-t] of the houses of weavers&quot;). 106. See preceding note and Junker, Gîza V, p. 56; also CG 1336. 107. From Ziegler, Akhethetep, p. 176. 108. H.G. Fischer, in Studies Simpson, pp. 173­74. 109. See note 247 below, and Pl. 1a. 110. Contrary to Wb. II 448 (9­10), the word rty &quot;washerman&quot; is attested before the Middle Kingdom: Hassan, Saqqara II, p. 33 and pl. 25bis.; Fischer, Dendera, pp. 62 and fig. 13 (Dyn. VI), 156 and fig. 30 (Heracleopolitan Period). Conceivably, however, much the same meaning is to be applied to the title ê: of a woman named Ê£w in Jéquier, Oudjebten, p. 16, fig. 11; cf. Fischer, ZÄS 93 (1966), p. 68f. But Ranke may be right in regarding this as part of the name (PN II, 304 [27]) since Ê£w is elsewhere known only for men (Ranke, PN I, 388 [15]). It seems unlikely that ¢wt-¢mt (Wb. III, p. 87 [9]) means &quot;house of washerwomen&quot; as Junker suggests in &quot;P¢rnfr,&quot; ZÄS 75 (1939), p. 64. See also Posener­Kriéger, Archives II, p. 658.

66

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

111. A few of the more complete scenes: Maria Mogensen, Le mastaba égyptien de la Glyptothèque Ny Carlsberg (Copenhagen 1921), figs. 29, 33­35 (= CG 1534); Junker, Gîza XI, fig. 64; Abu-Bakr, Giza, fig. 95A; Epron­Wild, Tombeau de Ti I, pl. 67. There are many statuettes showing the various aspects of this activity: Breasted, Egyptian Servant Statues, p. 17ff. and pls. 15­20, 25b, 28­29a, 31, 32b; Hassan, Gîza VI/3, pls. 74, 75, 78, 80. Among the examples where women participate with men in the making of bread see James and Apted, Khentika, pl. 9; Dunham and Simpson, Mersyankh, fig. 11. 112. H.E. Winlock, Models, pp. 27­29 and pls. 22, 23. For references to the term for this activity (nt) see Junker, &quot;P¢rnfr,&quot; ZÄS 75 (1939), p. 66. 113. Cairo JE 56994, from Artibus Asiae 22 (1959), 251, fig. 11. The date is discussed by Cherpion, BIFAO 82 (1982), 127­43, and Mastabas et hypogées, pp. 123­24. Initially dated to the Fifth Dynasty (after Sahure), she finally concluded that it belongs to the reign of Cheops. But the technique of sunk relief can hardly be so early (cf. Smith, Sculpture, p. 251), particularly since it was initially used for inscriptions on the exterior of the tomb chapel. The detail of the owner's wig also speaks for the later alternative. 114. Bakers and cooks: The Belegstellen for Wb. II, p. 459 (13) give only one Old Kingdom á reference for rt¢ (Junker, Gîza II, fig. 20), but there is also a /g! /°ÃÕ! &quot;director of bakers, director of cooks&quot; (Junker, &quot;P¢rnfr,&quot; ZÄS 75 [1939], p. 65, who notes that the ° ÃÕ á &quot;cook&quot; similarly follows bakers in the aforementioned example), and a Ã #gCÕá &quot;inspector of bakers for the king's repast&quot; (Gizeh and Rifeh, pl. 7A); for other simple examples of rt¢ see Dennis, &quot;New Officials of the IVth to VIth Dynasties,&quot; PSBA 27 (1905), p. 34; Kanawati, Hawawish I, fig. 8; and for those who are fsw &quot;cook&quot; see also Posener­Kriéger, loc. cit. It may be added that only men are shown cooking meat in Old Kingdom scenes. Although a woman of é the late Old Kingdom is named °Ã í (BM Stelae IV, p. 32[832], and ewer and basin in the Louvre, for which see now Brovarski in Hommages à Jean Leclant [Cairo 1994], pp. 107­109), the name does not show a feminine ending as would be expected of a female &quot;cook.&quot; 115. Abu-Bakr, loc. cit.; Simpson, Western Cemetery I, fig. 32; Saleh, Three Old Kingdom Tombs, pl. 11. Statuettes of this activity: Breasted, op. cit., p. 30ff. and pl. 29, 30 (30b much restored); Hassan, Gîza I, pl. 71. More commonly the statuettes represent a man. 116. Winnowers: One of the most common scenes; only a few need be cited: LD II, pls. 47, 71a, 80a; Epron­Wild, Tombeau de Ti III, pl. 155 (the most complete example); Junker, Gîza VI, fig. 47; XI, fig. 75; Hassan, Gîza I, fig. 21; Duell, Mereruka, pl. 168. Male winnowers are apparently attested for the Middle Kingdom (Meir I, pls. 4, 21 [4]; note also the determinatives of ¢ g» [ in Beni Hasan I, pl. 8 [19], although Wm. Ward translates &quot;group of five&quot; in his á Titles of the Middle Klngdom, no. 420. They are more frequent in the New Kingdom ( J.J. Tylor, The Tomb of Renni [London, 1900], pl. 14; Tylor­Griffith, Paheri, pl. 3; Davies, Two Ramesside Tombs, pl. 30; cf. Klebs, Reliefs III, p. 14). 117. Wresz., Atlas III, pl. 55(B) (= Quibell, Excav. Saqq. I, pl. 20 [2]).

»» »»»

Notes

67

118. The market scenes are listed in PM III2, pp. 907(15): 473(36), *484(5) (to which add another block, showing a female buyer: Hodjash and Berlev, Reliefs and Stelae, no. 3), 512(6), 523(22), *642(7); also *351(6), 419­420 and *Cairo JE 39860 (Yvonne Harpur, &quot;The Identity and Position of Relief Fragments,&quot; SAK 13 [1986], 115 [Fig. 4]­117). The asterisk indicates that women are involved. 119. Harpur, loc. cit. 120. From Moussa and Altenmüller, Nianchchnum, fig. 10. A woman is a buyer elsewhere in the same scene. This is PM III2, p. 642(7) in note 118 above. 121. This is fairly closely paralleled by the statement of a buyer directly above this one; although he too eats a leek or onion, he has a bowl beside him and he says &quot;Give something, that I may drink this because of it.&quot; Here it is bread that is being sold, and the transaction is ingeniously explained (ibid., p. 83) as a vessel being offered to taste a drink made from the bread that is handed over. The interpretation of ¢r as &quot;out of&quot; seems doubtful, however; it hardly seems to be attested in the New Kingdom formula zwr mw ¢r bbt &quot;drink water at the current&quot; (Barta, Opferformel, Bitte 68). 122. Junker, Gîza I, pl. 23; II, fig. 34; and a lesser overseer (s¢) of singers is a priest of the divinities themselves: Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, pls. 36, 39; for the earliest representation of the mrt-singer see H. Goedicke, Re-used Blocks from the Pyramid of Amenembet I at Lisht (New York 1971), p. 36f. 123. Cf. Allam, Hathorkult, pp. 3­98. 124. Firth­Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, p. 113 and pl. 53 (3): &quot;Hathor [appears] in the door of the east. `May she be greeted,' say the gods. `Thou art greeted,' says Re,&quot; etc. 125. Meir IV, pl. 10: &quot;Gold (scil. Hathor) appears in the great door. `Thy power is exalted' says Horus.&quot; 126. Ibid., pls. 4, 7, 9. 127. Saleh, Three Old Kingdom Tombs at Thebes, pl. 17. 128. For references see Fischer, JARCE 1 (1962), p. 15, n. 58 and fig. 6, where (6e) a sistrum is also shown in the hand of a dancer at Giza (Junker, Gîza X, fig. 46). 129. Drawn from the photograph shown in ASAE 43 (1943), pl. 40, p. 473; cf. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, pp. 12­13 and fig. 13. 130. On the false door of Ênmw, Giza tomb G 5233 (in the excavation records of the MFA). He is also a priest of the Memphite Hathor &quot;Mistress of the Sycamore.&quot; 131. Mariette, Mastabas, p. 90. 132. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 69, n. 3. 133. Ibid., n. 8. 134. Kanawati, Hawawish III, fig. 26.

68

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

135. Bissing, Re-Heiligtum II, pls. 5, 13; III, pls. 4 (140, 141, 142), 15 (253). 136. Posener-Kriéger, Archives I, p. 123. 137. From Meir V, pl. 42. 138. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, pp. 39­49. 139. For the translation of this word see Faulkner, Pyr., p. 200, no. 1. 140. E. Edel, Das Akazienhaus und seine Rolle in den Begrabnisriten de alten Ägypten (Berlin 1970). 141. E. Edel, &quot;Beitrage zum ägyptischen Lexikon V,&quot; ZÄS 96 (1969), pp. 9­14 See also Munro, SAK 1 (1974), p. 49, and Doppelgrab, pls. 10, 13, 17; Altenmüller, &quot;The Offering Table of Khentika from the Causeway of King Unas at Saqqara,&quot; SAK 9 (1981), p. 292, n. 6. 142. Borchardt, Åa£¢u-reTM II, pl. 47; cf. Detlef Franke, in Liebieghaus Museum, pp. 59­65. 143. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 70. 144. Most specifically attested by the funerary decree of Ny-k£-Ìr at Tehna, Urk. I, 24­27. 145. Schafik Allam, &quot;Le ¢m-k£ était-il exclusivement prêtre funéraire?&quot; RdE 36 (1985), 1­15. The ¢mw-k£ were numerous, for their obligation to provide offerings was a part-time affair, in which different corps often relayed each other for only a month of service at long intervals (Ann Macy Roth, Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom [Chicago 1991], p. 116), and that service may not have taken many hours each day. Their considerable number is also indicated by the fact that they were controlled by all three levels of supervisors--¡my-r, s¢, and ¡my-t; also ' (m¢, CG 57192), with much the same meaning as ¡my-r. The lower level of ßr¡ &quot;assistant&quot; is also known (CG 1634, for which see Fischer, Egyptian Studies II, pp. 106­107. 146. Discussed in detail by Del Nord, &quot;The term nr: `harem' or `musical performers'?&quot; in Fs. Dunham, pp. 137­45. 147. I find it difficult, in any case, to accept Betsy Bryan's argument (&quot;The Etymology of ÓNR `Group of Musical Performers',&quot; BES 4 [1982], pp. 35­59) that nr derives from n¡ &quot;beat the rhythm,&quot; which is apparently 3ae inf. (cf. her n. 85). The Old Kingdom makes a clear distinction between the noun nr, referring to a group of women who are portrayed and described as á dancing and singing, written Cg (an individual member of which is written C g , as in the mastaba of M¢w at Saqqara; also Jéquier, Oudjebten, fig. 12) and, on the other hand, the verb µ C (Pyr. 557 c) on which the term &quot;percussionist&quot; is based (f. CÉ , for which see n. 126 above; m. CÉ , for which see n. 130). Ward, Titles of the Middle Kingdom, p. 132, gives abundant evidence for later percussionists. They are not, at this period, to be confused with singers and dancers, even though the activities of the latter were related to theirs. Only after writing these lines did I notice that Wm. Ward similarly criticizes Bryan's article at greater length in the addenda to his Essays on Feminine Titles, pp. 151­53. 148. Deir el-Gebrâwi II, pl. 7. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the label is between a row of dancing women above it and a row of singing and dancing men below it. Although the label should apply only to the men, the term nrt may well refer to the women.

Notes

69

149. The term nr (det. ![) is applied to male and female dancers in the tomb of K£.¡-¢p/ Tt¡-¡qr (Kanawati, Hawawish I (1980), fig. 12; for the date cf. Brovarski, &quot;Akhmim in the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period,&quot; Fs. Mokhtar, p. 134f. 150. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 70; from Fig. 16 it may be seen that the title &quot;overseer of á ornaments&quot; (g Û ), scarcely visible in Wresz., Atlas III, pl. 11, is to be added to my previous listing. 151. C. Desroches Noblecourt, La femme au temps des Pharaouns (Paris 1986), p. 190, and Schulze, Frauen im Alten Ägypten, p. 175, referring to Macramallah, Mastaba d'Idout, pl. 7--an error already noted by H. Brunner, Altägyptische Erziehung (Wiesbaden 1957), p. 46, n. 151. 152. Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 71f. 153. Ibid., p. 72, n. 23. 154. Ibid., p. 47, fig. 14 and pl. 15. 155. Fischer, Egyptian Studies III, pp. 238­39, figs. 1, 2. Based on a slide kindly provided by Zahi Hawass. 156. Op. cit., I, p. 72 (24). From the collection of George Michailides. The drawing, by Peter Der Manuelian, has been made from a photograph. 157. One might expect the term for midwife to be sms¡t, for which Wb. IV, 142 (6) cites the birth scene in Deir el-Bahari II, pl. 49, referring to the goddess Heqet. But as in this case, the use of the causative verb sms¡ seems to be restricted to divinities. Unlike sf (notes 214­15 below), it does not appear in personal names. /nTMt, as a term for &quot;midwife,&quot; may well be related to mnTMt &quot;wet-nurse,&quot; which would then belong to the group of words in which an initial w or ¡ is replaced by the formative m (Gardiner, EG §290, with reference to Grapow's study of this class of nouns). 158. Cf. Winifred Blackman, The Fellahin of Upper Egypt (London 1927), p. 63: &quot;If a midwife is called to assist at a birth, she brings with her the customary confinement chair, for women in Egypt give birth in a squatting attitude.&quot; The same attitude is to seen in the hieroglyph showing a woman giving birth: ]. In the Pharonic Period two large bricks (msnt or bt) were used for this purpose (Wb. II, 148 [9]; V, 554 [6, 7]. But bt may refer to a block of various materials, including cloth (ibid., 9­18; Grundri der Medizin VII/2, p. 1001), and it seems likely that the two blocks were generally made of something more comfortable than dried mud. For this matter see also Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (London 1993), p. 83. 159. Epron­Wild, Tombeau de Ti III, pl. 155. A particularly close example appears in Wm. K. Simpson, The Offering Chapel of Sekhem-Ankh-Ptah (Boston 1976), pls. D and 16d. 160. Junker, Gîza XI, fig. 64. 161. Kaplony, MIO 14 (1968), 197­98, fig. 4 and pl. 3 (already mentioned in n. 52). He has LC reconstituted the title as h ò_ mnTMt pr TM£ &quot;die Amme des Palasts.&quot; But the first two signs cannot be correct, since they do not fill the available space, nor do they suit the remaining

70

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traces (seen on the basin itself as well as on the photograph from which Fig. 26 was made), which evidently belong to the foot of g and the right end of á. Thus ¡my(t)-r &quot;overseer&quot; is virtually certain. The determinative looks much less like _ than the determinative of ¡nTMt , indicating that the completely missing sign is in fact ®. For the absence of before ® cf. Fig. 25; this is common in Old Kingdom names that begin with phonetic ®: Ranke, PN I, 33 (4, 6, 9, 10), 36 (23­25); II, 263 (3), as compared with few examples with : ibid., p. 341 (I, 33 4); the second writing became more common after the Old Kingdom. 162. pWestcar 11, 18­19. See also Emma Brunner-Traut, &quot;Wochenlaube,&quot; LÄ VI, 1282­84; and &quot;Hebamme,&quot; LÄ II, 1075: &quot;Ihr Beruf war als `unreine' Tätigkeit sicherlich nicht angesehen.&quot; And for the absence of further mention of midwives see Paul Ghalioungui, The Physicians of Pharaonic Egypt (Mainz 1983), pp. 45, 92. 163. This is an elongated panel which bears three columns of funerary formulae above her figure. It is located beside the main false door of the owner, who has modest titles of stewardship but an impressive number of progeny--16 children in all--by two wives. One of his wives has the same name, but, although she appears repeatedly on the walls of the tomb chapel, she is never given the title of midwife. The name Nfr-¢tp.s is very common, and it may be simply coincidental that the midwife has it. In any case it seems unlikely that this funerary inscription belongs to the wife, since she is amply provided with offerings on her false door. The midwife may well have been accorded a monument of her own because, having assisted with the birth of some or all of the owner's numerous children, she was virtually regarded as a member of the family, even if she was not related by kinship. I am obliged to Dr. Hawass for the information on which this conclusion is based. 164. An example somewhat like that of Fig. 24 is to be found in Fakhry, Monuments of Sneferu II/1, fig. 13. 165. Macramallah, Mastaba d'Idout, pl. 7. The presence of the nurse in this case may be explained by the fact that the princess is portrayed as a young girl. 166. Wb. III, 293­94. Kees, ZÄS 84 (1959), 67, notes a Twenty-sixth Dynasty example. 167. Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines, pp. 462, 469. MnTMt is less frequent than Ônmt--six cases as compared with sixteen. 168. Junker, Gîza XII, pp. 118­22 and fig. 9. 169. Spell 329: CT IV, 165c. Spell 60: CT I, 252b. Spell 1047: CT VII, 300a. 170. The first of Ranke's examples in PN I, 270 (10), from Mariette, Mastabas, p. 313, is CG 57173, and this has the determinative in both cases, at the bottom and at the upper left corner. The remaining example again has the determinative, as shown in Junker, Gîza VI, fig. 32. So too the (n)mt of PN I, 269 (19); the lack of n may be an error on the part of Mariette. The determinative likewise appears in the Ónmt-Zw of Boston MFA 31.77 (mistakenly omitted in Ranke, PN I, 427 [11] and PM III2, 207); also in Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, p. 16 (though not visible in pl. 39), and in the exhibition catalogue of Madeleine Page-Gasser

Notes

71

and A.B. Wiese, Ägypten, Augenblicke der Ewigkeit: Unbekannte Schätze aus Schweizer Privatbesitz (Mainz 1997), p. 55 (28). For earlier examples see note 207 below. Junker, loc. cit., also cites ¡C g from Clarence Fisher, The Minor Cemetery at Giza (Philadelphia 1924), pl. 44 (2), a name, which he interprets as &quot;a thousand nourishers,&quot; with which one might compare ¡ ¢ ¢ (Abu-Bakr, Giza, figs. 39, 41b &quot;A thousand speakers[?]).&quot; The only iconographic evidence for the use of crossed sticks in baking is Hassan, Gîza V, fig. 123, although a pair of sticks, in the same context, are also to be seen in LD II, 105 (b). 171. Simpson, Western Cemetery, fig. 41; the sign is more rounded than the drawing shows; cf. pl. 55. 172. Ward, Titles of the Middle Kingdom, no. 1129, and Essays on Feminine Titles, p. 12. A determinative is lacking in Ward's one Middle Kingdom example where this title precedes a name: Marie-Pierre and Sydney Aufrère, L'Egypte et Provence (Avignon 1985), fig. 41 (A). 173. Fischer, Coptite Nome, p. 110, referring to CG 20105. Ónmt-Mnw here has the Old Kingdom form, while a Dyn. XI stela has (ibid., p. 107). This designation of Akhmim resembles the earlier names of estates, and &quot;The Nourisher of Min&quot; may be related to the goddess MutMin (ibid., p. 38). For later examples of nmt, nmty, see Dimitri Meeks, Année Lexicographique II (Paris 1981), p. 282 (78.3047­48). 174. CT I, 252b (B10Cd): CT VI, 87 (B1Bo): less clearly CT VII, 224f. This is generally replaced by [. 175. Mention should also be made of the obscure m¡trt (Wb. II, p. 45 [6]), which survived longer as an independent title than masculine m¡tr, known only from the Second and Third Dynasties; for the latter see Fischer, JNES 18 (1959), pp. 262­63. 176. R nswt vs. /ry t nswt: Despite their many titles denoting stewardship, women are not á known to share the masculine title &quot;custodian of property.&quot; And while Õá is often written identically for both men and women, in the case of women it is also Õá or Õá , but never á , as might be expected in some cases if it were to be read *¡ryt t nswt. These writings are Õ never applied to men; CG 1714 might seem an exception, but Borchardt's copy is incorrect, as may be seen from his pl. 91. Examples are known from Dynasties IV­V: CG 1396, 1415; á Junker, Gîza III, figs. 28, 30 ( ÕC ), 32; VI, figs. 32, 41; VIII, fig. 91; IX, figs. 39, 44; Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, p. 20, fig. 4; Bahrein and Hemamieh, pl. 20 (left); cf. also the writings in Pls. 3­ 4 below. The version Õ á is more usual, and it occurred still more frequently in the Sixth C Dynasty and later, as in the Frontispiece. The writing Õá rt nt nswt is also attested, though much less often: Brunner, &quot;Die Bekannte des Königs,&quot; SAK 1 (1974), 55­60; Edel, Felsengräber II, 1/2, pp. 91­92. Another example is attributed to Nt-m-pt on the false door mentioned in n. 43 above. As for masculine r n, this is warranted for the Sixth Dynasty by Pyr. 855c, as Edel notes, following Sethe (Pyr. Übersetzung und Kommentar IV, p. 119); and there can be little doubt of its relevance, for r n RTM &quot;acquaintance of Re&quot; is followed by an allusion to the kindred title smr Ìr-£ty &quot;companion of Horakhty.&quot; The king holds these titles in relation to the gods just as do his subjects in relation to him. At least three examples of masc. Õá are C

217. Ranke, PN I, 9 (12); II, 337. For the meaning cf. Middle Kingdom N-h£¡-mw &quot;The fluid has not descended&quot; for which see Fischer, Egyptian Titles of the Middle Kingdom, 2nd ed. (New York 1997), p. 44. 218. G. Daressy, Mastaba de Mera, MIE 3/5 (1898), p. 567. 219. H. Fischer in Studies Simpson, pp. 272­73. 220. Loc. cit. This may refer to the head being hidden by the caul. 221. Fischer, Egyptian Studies III, pp. 60­61. 222. CG 1686: Ranke, PN I, 149 (18, 24). 223. See Ranke, PN II, pp. 182­85, for this class of names. 224. Ranke, PN I, p. 420 (19) compares Middle Kingdom Myt (p. 145 [26]) and cites Cairo J. 40831 (Wainwright, &quot;Three Stelae from NagTM ed Deir,&quot; ASAE 25 [1925], p. 165 and pl. 2, from which it may be seen that this belongs to the oldest group of stelae from the cemetery in question). 225. PN I, 144 (1). 226. Mz¢t: PN I, 164 (16). Dbt: PN I, 339 (10); BM 157 (BM Stelae I2, pls. 6, 7). Hrt: PN I, 261 (25). 227. Mz¢: PN I, 164 (14); II, 363. Db: PN I, 399 (8) (MK). Hr: PN I, 261 (18) (MK). 228. Two women dating to the end of the Middle Kingdom: K.A. Kitchen, &quot;Lotuses and lotuses,&quot; Varia Aegyptiaca 3 (1987), pp. 29­31. 229. Gardiner, &quot;The Egyptian Origin of Some English Personal Names,&quot; JAOS 56 (1936) p. 189f. Also discussed by Kitchen (preceding note). 230. PN II, p. 379, referring to I, p. 254 (4). 231. Gardiner, op cit., p. 197. 232. CG 1578, with missing upper left corner supplied by Mariette, Catalogue général des monuá é ments d'Abydos (Paris 1880), p. 87. Borchardt supplies the additional of the title ò ; although this is omitted by Mariette, it is favored by the available space, which would otherwise be exces$ sive, and it reappears in ò . The titulary of Nbt is discussed in Fischer, Egyptian Studies I, pp. 74­75. The drawing has been made by Peter Der Manuelian with the aid of a computer. 233. CG 1431; ibid. vol. II, fig. 58 and pp. 141­43. One of the two queens also appears on a pseudo-false-door (CG 1439) which is shared with a certain /ww whose relationship to her is unstated; possibly he is another brother, or a nephew. It has been suggested that Nbt may actually have been the mother of only one of the two queens; the queen of Pepy II would then have been a half-sister of ÎTMw (ibid. I, p. 75, n. 40).

76

Egyptian Women of the Old Kingdom

234. For this use of the title see Wb. I, 142 (8): Gardiner, Onomastica I, pp. 49­50: Habachi, ASAE 55 (1958), 171. 235. Wb. I, 142 (6). 236. So also Nigel Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom (London 1985), p. 303, n. 10. But he doubts that, despite &quot;the embarrassingly large number of viziers,&quot; their title was merely titular in other cases, as Helck has maintained (ibid., p. 322); the authority of the provincial viziers of southern Upper Egypt was evidently real, but divided with those at Memphis. 237. As is evident from the first name of the son named Ny-TMn-Nfrk£rTM, whose &quot;good name&quot; is /¡-ßm£¡. 238. CG 1575. 239. LD II, pls. 103, 104. 240. Ibid., pl. 104. 241. This occurs elsewhere in the same context: CG 1536, as well as in Firth­Gunn, Teti Pyramid Cemeteries, pl. 53. A strange variation is known from a fragmentary scene at Sharuna, dating to the Sixth Dynasty, shown at right as recorded by Broderick and Morton, PSBA 21 (1899), 27. 242. Drawn from the photograph in Moussa and Altenmüller, Nefer, pl. 14. 243. Ancient Egypt in the MMJ, pp. 166­174 and fig. 8­9 (the latter reproduced here); for the date see also ibid., p. 184 (referring to p. 170). 244. E.g. MFA 21.3081 (Reisner, Giza I, pl. 65b); Epron­Wild, Tombeau de Ti I, pl. 39. For other examples of emaciated old women see Fischer, &quot;An Example of Memphite Influence in a Theban Stela of the Eleventh Dynasty,&quot; Artibus Asiae 22 (1959), fig. 10, 13 following p. 240, fig. 11, p. 251 (the last in Fig. 19 above). 245. E.g. CG 1397, 1483, 1565, 1619; see also Fischer, JNES 18 (1959), pp. 246, fig. 10(e) and 244­48, where the general subject of male corpulence is discussed; and JARCE 2 (1963), frontispiece and p. 19, referring to an example of the Heracleopolitan Period: MMA: 12.183.8. 246. This style of pigtail appears throughout the representations of the princess Idut at Saqqara: Macramallah, Mastaba d'Idout. 247. Berlin (East) 15416­21. PM III2, p. 298. The date is discussed by Cherpion, Mastabas et hypogées, pp. 125­26. 248. See Fig. 11 and note 70 above. These scenes might be associated with the preparation of perfume, but it should be noted that this activity is only attested for the Late Period (contrary to Lucas, Materials, p. 86); see Fischer, &quot;The early publication of a relief in Turin,&quot; GM 101 (1988),